Patients in hospitals, clinics, or doctors' offices are often provided with a privacy gown in an effort to help patients maintain their modesty during examinations. Numerous prior art hospital gowns have been designed in an effort to achieve a maximum amount of patient privacy while allowing the health care professional access to the patient's body for performing the various tests and examination procedures.
For example, a popular cloth examination gown is one made of a single sheet of dacron/cotton blend material with two ties behind the neck and two rear vertical hems. While the rear section is split in two and tied together at the back of the neck, the front section is solid. This may be acceptable for some types of examinations. However, it compromises the patient's modesty for other types of examination, for example, breast or vaginal examinations by an OB/GYN health care specialist. These and some general examinations, such as a total general physical or abdominal organs examination, may be performed with more modesty to the patient than presently allowed by such gowns while also providing access to the patient's body. Modesty concerns make desirable a maximum amount of access with a minimum amount of actual exposure of the body.
Prior art hospital gowns have attempted to achieve modesty while providing access to the patient's body. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,763 (Shah) discloses a multi-purpose patient gown with a front capable of being open from the neckline down to the hemline and further capable of being unfastened, in sections, so as to expose limited portions of the patient's body, such as the breast. Another approach taken to the problem of providing an examination gown that maintains modesty while allowing the health care professional access to the patient's body is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,932 (Doyle). This patent discloses an examination garment with a frontal access opening beginning at the neckline and running down the front of the torso. The Doyle reference also includes an opening in the upper leg area of the pants, adjacent the crotch, to allow access to the groin area while the rest of the patient remains covered.
These are only two examples of the many prior art hospital gowns which have been designed in an effort to maintain modesty while providing access to the patient's body for proper examinations.
None of the prior art hospital gowns have achieved maximum simplicity while providing in a one-piece gown full access to critical areas of most general exams and specifically for many of the typical OB/GYN examinations, such as breast exams, fundal measurements, heart tones, and bi/manual vaginal examinations.